Sprint tried to thwart Dish with boring legal nonsense

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Thursday, 20 June 2013

Sprint tried to thwart Dish with boring legal nonsense

Dish Network, if you are to believe the talking tv spokes-objects they employ is the simple smart solution for the consumer. Because of this down home charm that emanates from their DVR boxes, Dish is raking in some serious cash. And like most businesses that are flourishing they want to buy stuff. The current company that is in Dish’s fiscal cross hairs is the Clearwire Corporation.

Clearwire is a high speed internet provider. But Clearwire was keeping a secret. Well it’s not really a secret if you read the shareholders list, but who does that. It turns out that Clearwire is partially owned by Sprint. And Sprint is not very excited with the idea that Dish is going to be taking away internet customers. So they laid the legal smackdown.

But the twist comes when Dish realized that Clearwire is based in the state of Delaware. That would be fine. But due to the monopoly-crushing business laws in the state, you have to get approval from the board before allowing a company to buy so much of it. It seems Clearwire and Dish had tried to rush through the buy without consulting with Sprint, which is a big legal no-no.

What’s interesting about this is these laws were put into place to keep little guys from getting screwed over by the board of directors of Delaware Loan and Trust. But now it is also being used by two big guys to keep the other one out of emerging markets. Which may not have been what the bill was intended for. But if these types of laws slow down the homogenization of the three great communication powers. Maybe it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.